Our Michigan Senate estimate moves to 69 percent for El-Sayed

Our model now gives Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat, a 69 in 100 chance of winning Michigan's open Senate seat, against 31 percent for the Republican, Mike Rogers. A week ago, in our August 24 run, the same estimate was 57 percent. That is a shift of 11.5 points of Democratic win probability over seven days.

The projected margin moved with it. Our mean margin is now D+5.7, up from D+1.2 in the August 24 run. The spread around that central estimate is wide, and wider than it was: our model's 5th-to-95th percentile range runs from R+12.9 to D+24.4, compared with R+9.9 to D+12.2 last week. The distribution has moved toward the Democrat without becoming tighter.

One poll in the payload was fielded inside that window. EPIC-MRA, surveying 600 likely voters in Michigan from August 22 to 28, put El-Sayed at 47 percent and Rogers at 43 percent. We have already published part of the resulting move, to 62 percent on August 29. The remainder, from 62 to 69, is not matched by any further Michigan survey in this payload. The model moved; we are not going to assign it a cause we cannot document.

For context on the older data, the same pollster's July 24-31 survey of 600 likely voters had Rogers at 46 percent and El-Sayed at 43 percent, and a Beacon Research/Shaw & Company Research poll for Fox News of 1,006 registered voters, fielded August 6-10, had Rogers at 51 and El-Sayed at 47.

Nationally, our model gives Democrats a 49 percent chance of winning Senate control and Republicans 50 percent, with a mean of 50.2 Democratic seats. Democrats need 51 seats and Republicans 50, because the vice president is a Republican and a 50-50 tie goes to the Republicans. Michigan sits close to the center of that arithmetic.